Word: virality
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...cannot be detected in new, dividing cells, but is readily found in old cells where it has already done its damage. This seems to be a case, says the Sloan-Kettering report, of "the more active, the less evident." And it is the opposite of the situation in most viral infectious diseases, in which the virus abounds and is easily detectable as the fever approaches its climax, because infected cells are then mass-producing new virus particles...
...across the victim's throat. And this power depends on the microbes' being infected, in their turn, with a tiny particle of nucleic acid-the core of a virus, which has penetrated the bacterial cell. Why should not human cells become cancerous when a similar fragment of viral nucleic acid gets into their chromosomes and causes them to reproduce abnormally? By this reasoning, viruses have been called "bits of heredity in search of a chromosome...
...viruses, medical researchers have almost always been stumped by one basic problem: any virus-killing chemical must penetrate the body's own cells, and it usually destroys those cells along with the virus particles lurking in them. When the first effective use of a drug against a viral disease was reported last winter (TIME, Feb. 16), it seemed like the exception that proves the rule. Idoxuridine. or IDU, was successfully used for ulcers of the cornea and nearby parts of the eye that have little or no blood supply and are relatively resistant to drug damage. The next question...
Three doctors in Brighton, England, now think that it does. They have taken another short but promising step toward control of viral infections by using IDU against herpes simplex, the virus of fever blisters, in cases where the sores had broken out on the upper lip, nostril or cheek. Doctors usually dismiss cold sores as trivial, but the virus may cause a fatal inflammation if it spreads to the brain; it can cause blindness if it reaches the eyes. Some of the British patients already had corneal infections...
Though man must take full responsibility for physical and chemical pollution of the air (see above), he can hardly be blamed for the viruses he inhales. He cannot help catching the common cold, grippe, influenza, and related viral diseases. Nor can he expect much help from the medical profession. At the A.M.A.'s clinical meeting, Dr. Edward L. Buescher of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research made no secret of the doctors' slim chance of success in the search for cures or preventives...